Does Kanye West think Africa is a country?

Kim Kardashian (L) and Kanye West attend the "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, 2014 in New York City

The rapper this past weekend also announced he was “53 million dollars in personal debt”.

American rapper Kanye West’s Twitter rampage continues, and on Monday he wrote a tweet that suggested he may need a brush-up on his geography.

In what has been interpreted by some as tweets directed at Mark Zuckerberg, West wrote: “You’d rather open up one school in Africa like you really helped the country …”

The rapper this past weekend announced he was “53 million dollars in personal debt” and thereafter embarked on a campaign to ask for financial help from multibillionaire tech bosses Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder, and Larry Page, Google co-founder.

“Mark Zuckerberg invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas,” West tweeted, “after realising he is the greatest living artist and greatest artist of all time.”

Some have suggested the Africa tweet may have been directed at Oprah Winfrey, who in 2007 founded the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (OWLA) in Johannesburg.

The exact geographical scale of Africa has a long history of Western media and celebrities getting it wrong, often mistaking the 54-country continent for a country or neglecting to specify the specific country in Africa and opting for just ‘Africa’.

American politicians such as Sarah Palin and US vice president Joe Biden have reportedly made this error. Biden last year stated: “There’s no reason the nation of Africa cannot and should not join the ranks of the world’s most prosperous nations in the near term, in the decades ahead.”

In 2008, it was claimed Palin did not know Africa was continent and a not a country, which she later denied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQLBSHckQ8

Bizarrely, talk-show host Raven Symone last year said she was “from every continent in Africa”.

Former US president Bill Clinton received sideway glances in 2013 for this tweet: